His arm fell.
“Signore,” said Gordon steadily, “I long ago released you from any fancied obligation.”
“Pietro!” Teresa’s voice was choked with agony. “It is not him alone you would kill! You are aiming at my heart, too! Pietro!”
Amazedly, as she staggered to her feet, she saw her brother hurl the pistol through the open window and cover his face with his hands.
Trevanion stared, almost believing Gordon an adept in some superhuman diablerie, by which in the moment of revenge he had robbed this cat’s-paw of courage. Then laughing shrilly and wildly, he turned and lurched past Fletcher—leaning against the wall, dazed from the blow that had sent him reeling from the landing—down the stair.
In the street he picked up the fallen pistol. The touch of the cool steel ran up his arm. He turned back, a devilish purpose in his eye. Why not glut his hate once and for all? He had tried before, and failed. Why not now, more boldly? Italian justice would make only a pretense of pursuit. Yet British law had a long reach. Its ships were in every quarter of the globe. And Gordon, above all else, was a peer.
A sudden memory made his flesh creep. He remembered once having seen a murderer executed in Rome. It came back to him as he stood with the weapon in his hand: the masked priests; the half-naked executioner; the bandaged criminal; the black Christ and his banner; the slow procession, the scaffold, the soldiery, the bell ringing the misericordia; the quick rattle and fall of the ax.
Shuddering, he flung the pistol into the river with an imprecation.
Looking up he saw a gaitered figure that moved briskly along the street, to stop at the Lanfranchi doorway. Trevanion recognized the severely cut clerical costume, the clean-shaven face with its broad scar, the queerish, insect-like, inquisitive eyes. He glanced down the river with absurd apprehension, half expecting to see His Majesty’s ship Pylades anchored in its muddy shallows—the ship from which he had deserted at Bombay once upon a time, at the cost of that livid scar on Dr. Cassidy’s cheek.
He had shrunk from Cassidy’s observation in the lights of a London street; but in Italy he had no fear. He looked the naval surgeon boldly in the face, as he passed on to the police barracks.